In February, a group of masked gunmen stopped a minibus carrying skiers in the internal republic of Kabardino-Balkaria and shot dead three tourists from Moscow in cold blood. A ski lift was bombed soon afterwards and police later defused a series of car bombs in the area.

The terrorists, who are fighting to establish an Islamist Caliphate across southern Russia, openly said they viewed tourists as a legitimate target. For them, the entire North Caucasus area is a war zone and ethnic Russians are an occupying force that they hope to drive out.

The Kremlin's response to the murders was typically robust. Special Forces were sent into the mountainous region to hunt the gunmen and were reported to have shot dead at least some of the group.

The problem is that there are plenty of other terrorists operating across the region. Barely a day goes by without some kind of attack in the mostly Muslim region and the Kremlin's strong-arm tactics show no signs of paying off. In fact, human rights group say the authorities' often brutal tactics are only making things worse, radicalising a local population struggling with chronic poverty and unemployment.

The problems began in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union when Chechnya, one of the internal republics in the area, demanded its independence from Moscow.

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Two vicious wars followed, but over time the nature of the conflict changed. Moscow's fight today is not with secular Chechen separatists but with hard-core Islamist radicals who want the entire North Caucasus to break away from Russia.

The idea that Russian and foreign tourists will flock to the troubled region once the ski resorts are built while the insurgency is still raging is therefore one that many ordinary Russians are understandably sceptical of.